Aubrey Charette is an Oxford-educated and New York-trained Indigenous lawyer who now works exclusively for First Nation organizations and individuals in Canada. She is a sole practitioner, but often collaborates with other lawyers and professionals on larger matters, and has a specialized interest both specific claims and supporting Indigenous entrepreneurs.

Aubrey obtained a Bachelors and Masters degree from Oxford University in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, and worked for a number of years in the field of economic development. She worked for the United Nations and other international organizations in Europe and the South Pacific, and also advised Aboriginal financial institutions in Canada. The latter work piqued her interest in law, and she obtained civil and common law degrees from McGill University with the assistance of several scholarships.

Called to the bar in New York in 2010, Aubrey spent her first years of practice at an AmLaw 100 law firm in New York City. She provided high-level advice to multinational clients on a range of commercial issues, from contract and tort disputes to corporate governance, anti-trust, and bankruptcy and insolvency matters. She also advocated for clients in hearings, trial, arbitration and mediation in the firm’s litigation practice. She also undertook several compelling pro bono engagements, including pioneering a program to support individuals seeking consumer bankruptcy protection, and election monitoring in Sioux communities in South Dakota.

Aubrey returned to Canada in 2014 and worked as Legal Counsel to the Specific Claims Tribunal, an adjudicative body dedicated to the final resolution of historical breaches by the Crown of its legal obligations to Indigenous people. While on leave to live in Istanbul, Turkey, she worked with individual First Nation clients on a variety of matters, including litigation and advisory services. She resumed that work in 2020, as the pandemic hit, and thus has spent more time in her home office than she had planned.

While she is a sole practitioner, Aubrey works with other smart and resourceful lawyers and other professionals on most matters, firmly believing that lawyers work better in teams. This also enables her to be involved with larger files, and she has been gratified to undertake interesting and complex specific claims, ongoing general advisory and governance work as well as important litigation matters, including at the Supreme Court of Canada. She has lectured at the University of Manitoba and the University of Saskatchewan, and has done several legal clinics in Indigenous entrepreneurship programs. Through those clinics, she has really come to enjoy working with small and/or new Indigenous entrepreneurs, to assist in making the law useful, accessible and not intimidating. She prefers developing long-term relationships with her clients, is tenaciously scrupulous about billing for value only, and probably does more pro bono work than she should.

Last but definitely not least, Aubrey is a member of Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation, located about 1.5 hours north of Ottawa. She tries to visit the community regularly, at least in non-covid times. Her grandfather, Clarence Chabot, was born and raised on the reserve, and her father, John Chabot, is active in the community. She is very involved with the charity First Assist, and encourages everyone who has read this far to continue to its website firstassist.ca.